In my previous blog , I explained how OpenStack with IBM Platform Resource Scheduler (PRS) features enabled can optimize the infrastructure while helping to meet an applications service level objective. In this blog we will explore how PRS works with the OpenStack native Nova scheduler to optimize the environment. While OpenStack has a default scheduler that allows for the placement of VMs it lacks several key capabilities. Firstly, it only makes decisions based on static information in Nova’s SQL database which is incomplete. Secondly, it schedules resource only once during initial placement. There is no ability to optimize the system at run-time to make decisions to replace VMs as the usage of the environment changes and evolves. OpenStack is flexible enough to allow 3rd party schedulers to fit into the framework to provide enhanced functionality. OpenStack exposes scheduler hints that can be passed at VM creation time either through configuration of the flavor or through the nova boot command. PRS fits seamlessly into the OpenStack environment to provide enhanced value. Host Aggregate PRS enhances OpenStack with superior abilities to place VMs at initial deployment, and re-place VMs on new servers, as conditions change during run time. PRS can support global placement policies across an entire cloud/cluster , as well as on individual application/subsystem/tier deployment. Nova uses the concept of host aggregates to group... [Continue Reading]

IBM Platform Resource Scheduler (PRS) adds powerful scheduling and resource optimization capabilities to OpenStack environments. It leverages the experience of IBM in handling large-scale datacenters for high-performance computing, analytics and big data and applies that to new environments. In this blog we give a flavor of how PRS can work together with OpenStack in the context of an online e-commerce store. We will explore how OpenStack with PRS features enabled can optimize the infrastructure while helping to meet an applications service level objective. The Application On-line retailers are faced with the challenge of rapidly developing applications that deliver personalized shopping experiences across a variety of devices including web, mobile , tablets and in the future connected cars. We examine how such a retailer might develop applications for the delivery of physical or virtual goods. This structure would be typical of any type of retail environment that uses the internet to offer its users access to an online product catalog that they can browse and search, and ultimately make a purchase decision. Leveraging the information of users historic purchase patterns and their contacts gleaned from social networks like Facebook or Twitter , the system can make recommendations about which products they might be interested in. The following provides a high level view of the application architecture. It is meant to be representative and... [Continue Reading]

IBM’s Software Defined Environment (SDE) is strengthening its portfolio with the introduction of Platform Resource Scheduler , a High Performance Computing (HPC) Scheduler Technology for OpenStack Cloud Management . As a resource-aware and workload-smart solution, IBM Platform Resource Scheduler is a key element of the IBM SDE portfolio , enabling dynamic allocation of infrastructure using intelligent resource scheduling. “After making a major commitment to OpenStack earlier last year, IBM is now beginning to layer on top of OpenStack a suite of management technologies that promise to make it easier to dynamically manage cloud computing at scale as part of a larger software-defined environment (SDE)” clarifies Jay Muelhoefer, director of strategy for IBM Platform Computing in his recent ITBusinessEdge article: IBM Invokes HPC Scheduler Technology to Enhance OpenStack . IBM Platform Resource Scheduler brings an enterprise-class dynamic resource management that automatically optimizes resource utilization, reduces cost of cloud ownership and delivers higher workload quality through a comprehensive set of intelligent, policy-driven scheduling features. This new Platform Resource Scheduler is an extension to IBM’s SmartCloud Orchestration that leverages technology of IBM Platform Computing to simplify the management of cloud... [Continue Reading]

Rapidly-changing, highly competitive business environments are putting unprecedented demands on businesses. These shifts are driven by the explosion of cloud , mobile , social and big data technologies that are forcing organizations to rethink how they do business. The only way to effectively manage all these is an IT infrastructure that is flexible, agile and resilient. The underlying infrastructure can easily integrate these emerging trends into the existing business operations. IT infrastructure choice is critical to business success . Therefore, infrastructure choices matter – to deliver game-changing cloud, mobile, social and big data capabilities. Is your IT infrastructure to the challenge? On Thursday, January 16th 2014, join IBM executives and customers as we unveil latest technology breakthroughs to help you build IT infrastructure capabilities that are more scalable, agile, reliable and responsive to your business needs. Leading IBM experts will discuss top IT infrastructure challenges and introduce technology innovations for x86 featuring Intel Xeon processors, Flash technologies and more that would help you make right decisions about your IT infrastructure today. Join us at New York Stock Exchange, 2 Broad St. New York – 3:15 PM (Eastern) onwards to discover how our new product announcements can help you: Deliver improved decision support and data processing for mission-critical applications Drive higher performance and lower latencies... [Continue Reading]

New to IBM? Here’s an exciting opportunity waiting for you. Attend Pulse 2014 from February 23-26 at MGM Grand, Las Vegas for free. You just need to register with code PULSE14PEEK * for a Pulse Peek Pass to experience the premier cloud conference’ general sessions and expo hall with hundreds of solutions. Your Pulse Peek pass includes the expo and three days of general sessions spotlighting industry thought leaders and customer speakers. Take part in the new Pulse Peek promotion to network with industry leaders and gain insights from the brightest technical innovators about today's most emerging trends including software defined environments , big data , mobile , social and many more. *Offer is available for Prospective Clients who are first-time Pulse attendees until February 23rd. IBMers, Business Partners, and Pulse Alumni do not qualify. So what are you waiting for? Get ready to make bold moves with disruptive innovations to reach new markets and unleash growth in IBM’s largest cloud event- Pulse 2014 . Register today. Look forward to seeing you there! And join us to share your experiences on Twitter @ibmPulse or @IBMSDE. Niharika Trivedi nihtrive@in.ibm.com @nihatrived IBM Systems and Technology Group

The unprecedented explosion of mobile devices, wireless market and mobile apps is all set to redefine how businesses evolve and grow over the coming years. The complexities increase with rapidly changing technologies, empowered consumers and ever rising expectations and demands of a mobile connected generation. While all of these present immense opportunities for growth, organizations are at the same time facing tremendous challenges and are at pressure to innovate quickly or perish. According to the Forrester study: Mobile Is The New Face Of Engagement , mobile devices put power in the pockets of a billion global consumers. As the mobile devices become smarter, empowered consumers with mobile power are indeed changing the rules of the engagement for organizations. The new breed of technology savvy consumer expects information and services on demand, measures you against your competitors, makes informed decisions and influences buying behavior. Organizations need to quickly change their strategies to cater to the empowered consumers who want ‘Anytime, Anywhere, Anyhow’ capabilities in every sphere of life. The success factors for an organization depend on: How quickly they can provide innovative mobile solutions to their customers while containing the costs? How can they ensure same level of support across multiple platforms while maintaining integrity of data? What can they do to contain security challenges? CIOs would need to... [Continue Reading]

To understand the need for “sense-and-respond” optimization in the future, let’s take a look at how workloads are done today. Traditionally, workloads have been few in number therefore people are able to get hardware, configure it, put an operating system, a middleware, an application stack on top of it, manually optimize it, and get optimization benefits. This approach works when well enough when workloads are not dynamically changing and are small in number. But with this approach, we can’t get the benefits of agility which is a key underlying future need of today’s infrastructures . As a result of forces driving the New Era of Computing , the situation has changed. There are number of new kinds of workloads, for instance, the mobile platforms –people on the go are able to access much information. These kinds of mobile platforms are changing the world of IT and the same thing is happening with social business when people like to stay connected, being able to analyze the data and derive relationship and use that for understanding client preferences. These are the new kinds of trends that are changing the front end of IT, which is sometimes referred to as “new systems of engagement”. While the systems of engagement drive a new front end to IT, there is still traditional infrastructure, especially at the back end (“systems of record”), where traditional workloads are hosted. Cloud is changing... [Continue Reading]

The IBM Pulse team has been busy building a curriculum that allows you to engage yourself in deep technical training, learn from experts, be inspired by your peers, and gain insights on trends such as Cloud , Mobile , Big Data , Social Business , Software Defined Environments and many more. Now you can get a closer look at all this valuable content! Use the session preview tool to search for your favorite topics and get an early preview of the exciting sessions you’ll find at Pulse 2014 from February 23-26 at MGM Grand – Las Vegas, Nevada. The sessions are still being added, so keep checking for updates. Please keep in mind that you are building a sample agenda only. You may import this saved agenda into the Agenda Builder tool once you register for Pulse 2014. The fields indicated with an asterisk (*) are necessary. The agenda builder for attendees will be live a few weeks before the event and will let you build your schedule with days and times to better plan for what to expect when you’re at Pulse 2014 in Las Vegas. Out of 5 overarching streams , 20 tracks and 500 break-out sessions, you can search your favorite sessions by using keywords, session type, level or product and can also bookmark the sessions. Don’t wait explore now! Register today to get the insights and the guidance you need to make the bold moves to get ahead in a new year. Check for FAQs and share your experiences with us on... [Continue Reading]

In today’s knowledge ecosystem, the exchange of ideas has become the new means of production. The emergence of social and mobile technology is shifting employers’ competitive edge from hiring workers who gather knowledge to hiring workers who communicate it. From marketing and sales to product and service innovation, social is changing the way people connect and the way organizations succeed. According to a recent study from the McKinsey Global Institute, top-line growth for social business users can improve by 3 to 11 percent, and productivity can be enhanced by 2 to 12 percent. Social business is extending deeper into organizations and, at the same time, strategies are maturing. What was previously a series of initiatives driven by marketing and PR is now evolving into a social business movement that looks to scale and integrate social across the organization. The question now is, how will businesses harness this new reality? The answer would be - an IT infrastructure ! Significant opportunities await those who effectively apply social business on an IT infrastructure that is resilient and efficient enough to easily integrate social workloads into their existing business operations. Recently, IBM’s Institute for Business Value released its global C-suite study, The Customer-activated Enterprise . The research shows that most C-level executives realize that their organizations are becoming borderless and more permeable to outside... [Continue Reading]

The New Year is the propitious time for organizations to re-prioritize their business objectives and start afresh with renewed vigor and a clear mission. Technology concerns have become an integral part of this process as businesses are making use of IT in ever-evolving ways. Yet we often see businesses that lag behind, sometimes years behind in using the latest technologies to help them implement their strategies. If your company is hoping to grow over the next few years, you will need a technology strategy that will help you grow efficiently, and stay one step ahead of the competition. Join IBM Pulse 2014 from February 23-26 at MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada to make your New Year’s technology goals a reality. At Pulse, we will bring the technology planning guidelines that can help you form a strategy as you think about your business resolutions and professional goals for 2014. With five over-arching streams including 20 tracks and 500 breakout sessions, IBM Pulse is the ideal platform to explore today’s challenges and best practices in cloud , open standards , security , big data & analytics , mobile , social and many more. See how awesome you can make your Pulse experience with this new session preview tool . In addition to this, read the infographic below to know the top 10 exciting reasons to attend Pulse 2014 : If you’re looking to develop a backup system, move to cloud services or develop a... [Continue Reading]

The topic of Software Defined Storage (SDS) has been picking up momentum during last few months. Some analysts talk about SDS like some sort of storage virtualization, while others consider it a new type of software to integrate storage architectures more intelligently. But it seems like everybody agrees on considering SDS a software service - abstracted from the storage system - to deliver integrated management throughout the data center. Under these terms, SDS can be defined as an infrastructure whose hardware elements are virtualized and delivered as a service. As stated in the whitepaper prepared by Storage Switzerland for IBM, SDS is the “logical evolution of storage virtualization from simply being a storage aggregator to the end goal of storage as a service. To achieve this goal, software defined storage needs a platform from which to centralize.” Hence, storage virtualization can be considered as the first step towards SDS, and IBM has been leading the way in this market since 2003, when the first version of SAN Volume Controller (SVC) was announced. SVC was the first member of the Storwize family of systems, which inherited its name from the second member of the family, the Storwize V7000 , launched in 2010. The Storwize family shares the same architecture and technology, which provides significant benefits to customers including: 47 percent reduction in administration time 3 times better network bandwidth... [Continue Reading]

IBM Pulse - the Premier Cloud Conference, is returning to the MGM Grand, Las Vegas from February 23-26, 2014! Join IBM and more than 9,000 of your peers at Pulse as we discuss how to leverage cloud as a growth engine for a smarter enterprise. Pulse 2014 is the ideal platform to explore today’s challenges and best practices in open standards, cloud security, emerging cloud markets, and IBM SmartCloud technologies. The 4-day conference will also present visionary keynotes and a solution expo showcasing hundreds of the latest products and services in Cloud, Security and Smarter Infrastructure. Emerging trends like mobile , analytics and social business play critical roles in help¬ing enterprises differentiate and gain competitive advantage. Cloud sits at the center of these initiatives to deliver new applications and services with speed and agility. According to Gartner , from 2013 through 2016, $677 billion will be spent on cloud services worldwide. 92% of midmarket companies say they’ll invest in cloud technology within the next 36 months. This shows the future is certainly moving to the Cloud . IBM Pulse 2014 will highlight the transformational power of cloud to help you increase your business profitability and growth. The Pulse 2014 curriculum is highly impressive, consisting of five streams : Reinventing Your Business with IBM Cloud: This stream will cover the powerful benefits of cloud to improve... [Continue Reading]

Recently, Gartner has identified Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI) among the top 10 industry trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2014 and further. There are two simultaneous phenomena happening since last year or so. One is that enterprises are increasingly moving critical and performance sensitive applications to the cloud and the other is that many new mobile , social and analytics applications are directly getting developed on the cloud. This shifted the value proposition from cost reduction to time-to-value (agility) and optimization. SDI brings these capabilities together. According to Gartner, SDI enables the configuration and management of heterogeneous compute, storage, and network assets into an infrastructure environment that is flexible, resilient, responsive and optimized for workload demands. In addition to this, SDI incorporates initiatives like Open Standards, OpenStack, OpenFlow , etc. to enable more choice, to tap into a broad ecosystem of partner solutions, and to reduce business risk. When it comes to IBM, we use a more global term – Software Defined Environments (SDE) . IBM is well positioned to offer end-to-end SDE based on open standards and communities . With IBM’s Software Defined Environment, infrastructure is fully programmable to rapidly deploy workloads on optimal resources and to instantly respond to changing business demands. The Software... [Continue Reading]

As cloud computing has now become a prominent IT trend, Oxford Economics recently commenced a study to get a global snapshot of how organizations are using cloud. With help of IBM , Oxford Economics surveyed more than 800 cloud decision makers and users across the world for its report: “Under cloud cover: How leaders are accelerating competitive differentiation”. According to the report , cloud’s strategic importance to busi¬ness users is expected to double from 34 percent to 72 percent over the next three years. The study categorized survey respondents into the following groups based on their level of cloud adoption and the competitive advantage realized by them due to cloud adoption: Pacesetters have deployed cloud on a broad scale and are gaining competitive advantage over their rivals through cloud. Challengers are on par with Pacesetters in achieving greater efficiency through cloud, but still lag on differentiation and market responsiveness. Chasers are more cautious about cloud. They’re in early stages of adoption and are not yet using cloud to drive com¬petitive advantage. Through cloud, Pacesetters are 136% more likely than Chasers to reinvent customer relationships. Pacesetters are 170% more likely than Chasers to use cloud-based analytics to derive insights. Compared to Chasers, Pacesetters are 79% more likely to use cloud to locate and leverage expert knowledge across their ecosystem. No matter which category... [Continue Reading]

IT industry these days is facing a disruptive trend, as the entire infrastructure including compute, storage and network is becoming software defined. The workloads are getting shared in this programmable infrastructure for optimum utilization. This trend has profound implications on the IT industry. In the traditional workload scenarios , the workloads were few and stable. The software used to get manually installed on a fixed set of systems with minimal requirements for configuration. Changes in workload demand could be addressed by manually scaling the hardware. With emergence of cloud , traditional workloads were virtualized and moved to the cloud, but at large, they were continued to be manually tuned and managed. In addition, new workloads started to emerge. Mobile , Big Data , Social technologies & Scalable Services Ecosystem, presents extremely volatile workload characteristics resulting from changing business requirements. Consequently, current infrastructures that have been optimized for systems of record need to evolve to address this new set of requirements. Software Defined Environment (SDE) has the answer to this problem. SDE improves agility of business applications and accelerates the application lifecycle through rapid change. With SDE, infrastructure is fully programmable to rapidly deploy workloads on optimal resources and to instantly respond to changing business demands. SDE allows users of different skills to assemble and configure systems at all... [Continue Reading]

IBM Pulse 2014 , February 23-26 at MGM Grand – Las Vegas, will deliver three days of best practices, technical education and roadmaps for business transformation through Cloud, Security and Smarter Infrastructure. More than 8000 IBM Staffs, Business Partners and Clients will attend the conference from over 80 countries across the world. Today’s IT infrastructures are too complex, and are slow to keep up with today’s rapid rate of change. The proliferation of mobile devices, the explosion of data, expanding connectivity, and real time collaboration via social media has emboldened consumers to demand more personalization. And there are technologies today that deliver such capability. The emergence of cloud , big data & analytics , mobile and social trends , are fundamentally changing how we interact, engage and transact with our customers. Jacqueline Woods , IBM Vice President for Growth Solutions, will deliver insights on why infrastructure matters for these emerging technologies in her exclusive session: “A New Era of Computing: Are You "Ready Now" To Build A Smarter Enterprise?” at PULSE 2014 . The session will help us understand the implications of Cloud, Software Defined Environments, Big Data & Analytics, Social, and Mobile in our infrastructures and learn industry’ best practices to effectively implement these trends. The session will also talk about how... [Continue Reading]

In my previous blog , you have seen the trends and results of this year’s shopping season from Thanks Giving to Cyber Monday in U.S. This season’s shopping set new records in terms of number of sales and traffic which clearly shows that retailers were able to deliver smarter shopping experience to their customers with ease and in real-time. Providing the best shopping experience to customers is the fundamental need of retailers. To achieve this, there is a well-established IT infrastructure backing every process of the retail chain - from order taking to handling inventory to customer service to accounting. The underlying IT infrastructure is the enabling foundation of shared IT capabilities like Cloud , Big Data and Software Defined Environments upon which the business depends. It’s often said that retailers have more data than they know what to do with, a statement that has only become true as mobile technology and social media add customer touch points and data sources to those coming from stores, call centers, kiosks and ecommerce. Many retailers would like to use more of this data to gain greater insights into customer behaviors and demand patterns, but one of the barriers has been the enormous IT investment required for turning these volumes, variety and velocity of data into insights within a reasonable time frame. In addition to lowering costs, mitigating risk and increasing flexibility,... [Continue Reading]

The long Thanksgiving weekend including Black Friday and Cyber Monday sets the tone for the holiday season in U.S. This year was no different. In fact, the shopping trends, channels, sales, etc. grew at a phenomenal rate this year. According to the latest cloud -based analytics findings from IBM, Thanksgiving Day reported a 19.7 percent increase in online sales and Black Friday’s online sales grew 18.9 percent. However, the biggest online shopping day by U.S. shoppers was Cyber Monday , which made a record of 20.6 percent increase in online sales which grew 16.5 percent over the same period in 2012. With an increase in online sales across multiple channels, business leaders are turning to cloud-based, real-time analytics from IBM to understand and act on consumer trends in real time. IBM is uniquely positioned to help marketing, e-commerce, merchandising and customer service divisions build deeper customer relationships across every touch in the business cycle. Let’s take a look at IBM's real-time analytics alerts that helped our customers worldwide to analyze and gain insights from these record-breaking shopping holidays trends: Online Sales Set New Record: Cyber Monday online sales grew by 20.6 percent over 2012. Average order value was $128.77, down 1 percent year-over-year. Top Five Cities for Cyber Sales: New York took the top spot for total online retail sales on Cyber Monday. Rounding out the top... [Continue Reading]

Business demands of this modern world are becoming very dynamic and the IT services must be highly responsive to these demands. IT leaders are finding it very difficult to keep pace of these modern requirements, and thus the internal IT departments are becoming less effective. Challenges in IT infrastructure arise throughout the development process – from design to installation to support & services. Let’s take a look at some of the common challenges impeding responsiveness in IT infrastructures: Lack of strategic alignment between IT & Business: Business leaders need to act as a broker and move their IT from a cost center to a strategic center of business innovation. Technology: Technology is moving so quickly, and in so many directions like Big Data, Mobile, Social, etc., that it becomes challenging to adopt in this ever growing IT environment. However, technology advancement continues to drive economic growth and, in some cases, unleash disruptive change. Increasing complexity: Organizations need to move from IT silos to fully integrated management, from slow and manual infrastructures to rapid, repeatable and automated infrastructures and from reactive administration to proactive administration. Availability: The business needs high quality, highly available IT services. The difference is in business expectations and available alternatives. Scalability: IT infrastructures in many of the organizations lack the ability to enhance the system by adding new... [Continue Reading]